Not The Boys We Know
by Ista Devata
Summary: A parody. Must read! Dedicated to a wonderful group of people we all know and love. No, not International Rescue...


The night was still. A smatter of velvety clouds stroked the face of the moon and all was silent. If you had stood bathed in the moon's silvery glow that night you would have been forgiven for thinking the world had come to a standstill.

But then your eyes would have been drawn to an eerie orange glow in the distance. An anomaly- the sky shouldn't be orange at this time of night.

Unless-

And then the smell of smoke would have drifted towards you on the night breeze, caressing your nostrils seductively like a cheeky imp, making you wince and bringing tears to your eyes. And you'd realise- there was danger on the horizon. And you'd cross yourself and hope no-one was in trouble, and you'd make your silent plea into the sky.

Calling International Rescue. Calling International Rescue!

The small country cottage was fully ablaze. The fire roared uncontrolled- giant orange plumes of flame hissed and curled like ghastly fingers around the remains of the isolated building. They reached towards the darkened sky, roaring in triumph and flinging showers of sparks as the last of the four human inhabitants was consumed. Flesh crackled and spluttered, one bony arm groped the air, hissing and popping. Outside, at a safe distance, the sooty figures of Scott and Virgil stood watching helplessly, their grimy, sweat-streaked faces close to despair.

"Why the heck didn't they listen to us?" Scott muttered tersely as the last wall let out a sigh and crumbled into the hungry, joyous flames.

"Who knows?" Virgil murmured. "Who knows why people do what they do?"

Scott shot his brother a sidelong glance but decided against making any pointed comments about this being a fine time to start philosophizing. Instead he ran a soot blackened forearm across his glistening brow and turned away from the thundering conflagration.

"There's nothing more we can do now," he said, wearily. "Let's get the hell out of here."

TBTBTBTBTB

"So let me get this straight." Jeff Tracy sat back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach. "You say these women wouldn't allow you to rescue them?"

The freshly washed and neatly dressed Tracy boys weren't fooled by their father's display of patience. Scott and Virgil exchanged a look that said _here we go_. Gordon shuffled nervously from foot to foot and Alan looked as though he were about to interject, but thought better of it and swallowed his words with a harrumphing sound.

"That's right, sir," Scott nodded. "They wouldn't even let us past the door."

"Said we weren't invited," Virgil added, helpfully.

"Invited?" Jeff's eyebrows arched. "Invited to what- watch them burn to death?"

Scott shrugged. "They were having a meeting of some sort. I don't know what they were doing. They looked like part of a coven or something, if you ask me."

"A coven?" Jeff repeated again. "Is this some sort of joke, Scott?"

"No, sir," Scott mumbled. "That's exactly what it looked like." He fell silent, hoping that one of his unusually reticent brothers would take over.

"They had pictures of us on the walls!" Alan suddenly blurted. "It was like some sort of shrine to International Rescue!"

Jeff straightened in his chair as though a bolt of lightning had hit him. "What?" he exclaimed.

"Alan-" Scott began, but his blond youngest brother was on a roll now.

"No, Scott, let me tell Dad!" Alan's blue eyes blazed like cold fire. "Dad, they had pictures of Scott and Virgil above the fireplace and candles lit and everything. They were wearing sashes and robes and one of them must have caught fire while they were worshipping. They were yelling at us that we weren't the real International Rescue, we were a bunch of impostors."

"Haven't we been through this 'impostor' thing before?" Jeff muttered, his eyes seeming to look inward for a moment as he recalled yet another of the Tracys' crazy adventures.

"Yeah, but get this. One of them said we weren't the International Rescue _they_ knew. One of them asked Virgil if he was younger or older than John, and when he said older, another one started arguing that it wasn't true, _John _was the second oldest and let that be an end to it. Even while her hair was on fire!"

"You could say the argument got quite 'heated'," Jeff said, cracking a grin.

"The one who appeared to be in charge told us that she knew more about International Rescue than even _we_ did," Gordon said, finding his voice at last. "Which is crazy, because we've never met her before in our lives!"

"Even when Scott pointed that out, she acted like _we _were the ones who didn't know what we were talking about," said Virgil. "She said she was going to write a book one day and publish it herself if she had to. She was going to set the record straight once and for all. Except she can't now, of course." He drifted off into a memory of that burnt, withered arm reaching for the sky, defiant to the last, even in death.

"There was one of them who seemed as if she wanted to say something to the contrary, but was afraid of being seen to disagree with the others," Scott mused.

"As Voltaire once said, 'to find out who's in charge, find out who you're not allowed to criticize'," Virgil quoted, his handsome brow furrowed thoughtfully.

"Think their leader was associated with that guy who's always trying to kill us and discover our secrets?" Jeff asked, stroking his chin.

"Belah Gaat?" said Alan. Then cowered as four pairs of eyes turned on him like lazer beams.

"Wash your mouth out," muttered Scott. "And don't ever mention that name again."

"Well, that's what she called him," Alan protested. "Almost as if...well, as if they were..." he lowered his voice and shuddered as he spoke the next word, "..._lovers_."

"Ew," grimaced Gordon.

"Doesn't matter now though, because she's dead." Virgil recalled the way her blonde hair had caught fire like cotton candy, the stench of burning keratin filling his stinging nostrils.

"We found a pile of papers that had somehow survived destruction," Scott said, landing a smoke blackened stack of documents on Jeff's desk with a loud whump. A cloud of ash went up Jeff's nose, sending the Tracy patriarch into a fit of uncontrollable sneezing.

"Gesundheit," said Gordon, over and over again until Jeff finally sat back in his chair with his eyes streaming.

"They're stories," Scott said after his father had quietened down. "About us."

Jeff began to speak and erupted into another fit of sneezing.

"I don't recognise us in half of them," Scott continued, leafing through the top few papers. "I mean, how the heck would a bunch of women we've never even met know what we're like? How could they even presume to know?"

"Their leader told us our uniforms weren't the right blue," Alan said abruptly. "They should have been more sky-bluey and less blue-bluey."

"And they argued over Scott and Virgil's eyes," Gordon grinned. "One said Scott's eyes were cerulean blue. Another said they were ocean blue. One suggested they might be more turquoisey but the poor thing was scoffed at and snubbed. Even while they were on fire!"

Alan chuckled along with his brother. "One of them said Virgil's eyes were like caramel, another said they were like...get this...burnt honey." He turned to Virgil and fluttered his eyelashes girlishly.

There was a ripple of laughter around the room while Virgil's cheeks burned bright red. "Guys," he muttered. "I can't help being the best looking Tracy brother."

"With 'thick chestnut hair'," Alan smirked.

"There was another stack of papers that had been torn and shredded," Scott went on. "They were stories too- no worse, no better than these. But they had been deemed unworthy, even though some of them were quite good. Apparently there are two versions of us...yeah, I don't get it either...and they only approve of one."

"And which one is that?" Jeff asked tersely.

"Theirs."

"Theirs?"

Jeff's constant repetition was starting to irritate Scott. "_Theirs_," he repeated back, as though his father had gone deaf.

Jeff frowned and steepled his fingers on the desk. There was a small black smudge on his top lip where he'd wiped his nose- it made him look like Charlie Chaplin. "Let me see if I understand what you're saying, Scott. They only believe in _one_ version of International Rescue?"

"Correct," said Scott.

"And that's _their _version."

"Correct."

Jeff rubbed his hand over his chin, leaving another black smear. "And what about _our_ version?"

Scott shrugged. "Our version doesn't count. According to them, they know everything there is to know about International Rescue. From the color of our uniforms to the age order of each brother."

"No, they don't agree about that," Virgil reminded him. "Some of them think John is older than I am. Their discussions about it can go on for days."

"That's women for you," Jeff grunted. He was busy reading a story from the top of the stack. As he read further down the page his eyes widened and then narrowed. "Who said my mother was named Ruth?" he asked, more than a little annoyed.

"They did," Scott smiled.

"Everyone knows my mother's name is Grandma," Jeff snorted. "Grandma Tracy. I mean, dammit, she even _looks_ like a Grandma Tracy."

"That's because she is," said Gordon. "Best darned Grandma Tracy on the planet!"

"How can they just make this stuff up?" Jeff uttered. "It breaks my heart!"

"Wait until you get to the bit where Belah Gaat does bad things to Scott," Alan said gravely. "I mean, _bad_ bad things."

"No-one's reading that one," Scott growled. "I ripped it up. F- disgusting."

"Scott, how many times have I told you? Swearing doesn't make you a grown-up," Jeff chided gently. "But it's okay, I understand you're angry. I am too. These women have taken liberties with my family and I don't like it!"

"Well, it doesn't matter any more because they're dead," Virgil said, bluntly.

"As dodoes," Gordon added.

"Hoisted by their own petards," Jeff muttered.

"Their what?"

"Never mind," Jeff mused. He picked up the sheaf of papers and dumped it into the trash basket. A cloud of soot rose up and caused him to start sneezing again, and once more Gordon chimed in with a string of 'gesundheits' as though he had Tourette's.

"So what should we put in the report?" Virgil said, waiting patiently until his father had calmed down.

"Just make something up." Jeff wiped his watery eyes, leaving them black with soot, then waved his hand dismissively. "You know, like a _story._"

"We can call it 'The Incredible Witch Fire'," Alan beamed. "Or TIWF for short!"

"Virgil can write it," said Gordon. "He's better at grammar and spelling."

"And what's wrong with my writing?" Alan pouted.

"You don't understand syntax, your dialogue is stilted and you use way too much exposition," Gordon said, affecting an air of helpfulness, but really quite pleased that he was able to point out Alan's shortcomings.

"I'm never writing anything again," Alan said, folding his arms angrily.

"Good," smiled Gordon, not at all sympathetically. "You're crap anyway. The less writers there are like you around, the better."

"Now you're starting to sound like them," Alan grumbled.

"Yikes, sorry," Gordon apologized. "You know I was only joking, Al. I really do care about your progression as a writer."

"No you don't," Alan sulked.

"You're right, I don't," Gordon agreed.

"So is the meeting over?" asked Scott. He was impatient to leave so that he could get down to the games room and play some pool while drinking and smoking and making sexist comments about women.

"Yes," said Jeff. "File this one under: 'that's the way the cookie crumbles'. If they didn't want to be helped then there's nothing we could have done. End of story." He chuckled at his own pun.

As the Tracy brothers began filing out of the room, Gordon turned to his father one last time. "There's still one thing that bothers me, Dad," he said, his amber/golden/light brown/hazel/toffee colored eyes peering quizzically at his father.

"What's that, son?"

"Is Thunderbird 5 in a geostationary orbit or not?"

Jeff laughed indulgently and threw a rolled up ball of paper at his fourth son, a scrap of some story about Alan saving the day yet again and Virgil standing on a cliff with his chestnut hair ruffling in the breeze. "Go on, Gordon," he chuckled. "Scoot."

"Yes, sir!" Gordon laughed.

Jeff closed his eyes and sighed as the boy ran off down the corridor shouting, "Last one in the pool's a rotten egg...no, last one in the pool's the _second born son_!"

Then he looked down at the sheaf of papers sitting in the trash basket and shook his head.

"Preposterous," he muttered to himself. "Quite simply, _preposterous_."


End file.
